Clinton departs, admits U.S., Obama going through bad patch

Clinton left for Papua New Guinea this morning

KUALA LUMPUR — When Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked what she thought about comments that she was smarter than her husband Bill, the highest-ranking US diplomat gave an answer that was both convincing and yet diplomatic: “I think my husband is the smartest person I have ever met and he thinks the same of me.”

Her answer was met with applause by her audience of more than 500 people, including women leaders, academics and students, who had been specially invited to the more than hour-long “A Conversation with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton” at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) here today.

The town hall-style programme was also telecast interactively to two library centres in Kuala Lumpur and in Kuching for university students to follow the conversation.

In a candid question-and-answer session, she also spoke of Bill as being an endlessly interesting life partner after having known him for 39 years and being his wife for 35 years.

What struck the audience most was her poise and intellectual responses to even the most difficult of issues and questions from an enthusiastic audience.

At the town hall on Tuesday

Dresssed in a blue pantsuit and a hairband, she also spoke of her role of being a mother and more recently, a mother-in-law, and the long walks she takes with Bill along nature reserves and going to the movies in New York whenever opportunities present in addition to the usual tough issues of economics, politics, education and foreign policy.

Asked about her views about women going into politics, Clinton (picture) said they should be encouraged to do so but should be prepared for the hard work and to especially have “the skin of a rhinoceros”.

However, she said being a politician was intellectually demanding but rewarding, especially in being able to meet so many different kinds of interesting people.

As for the general thinking that the US was siding with the Israelis when dealing with the Palestinians, Clinton said that since the 1990s she had felt that both Israel had a right to a exist while the Palestinians had a right to a state.

The US too was committed to a two-state solution, she said, adding that the US had provided more aid to the Palestinians than any other country ever had.

Saying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an extremely complex issue, she said the US was committed towards securing a peace agreement from both sides through negotiations.

Clinton said she was working very hard to create greater trust between the Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their decades-long conflict.

“I find it very helpful to put myself in the other person’s shoes like if I were a Palestinian, if I were an Israeli, how do I see the world?” she said.

She welcomed Malaysia’s support for the Palestinians in their state building efforts so that they would be ready for statehood when agreement was reached with the Israelis.

Clinton said that her husband had taken the lead to work towards peace and creation of a Palestinian state via the Oslo Accords in 1993 but the peace plan was subsequently scuttled by internal conflict among the Palestinians and the assassination of the then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

The bad patches

To a question why China had managed to grow her economic might while the US economy had been seen to be on the decline, Clinton said her country had not deteriorated and that she was optimistic about her country’s economic prospects as its economic foundations were strong.

She said the US was going through a bad patch, especially with its high unemployment, but was confident of the future after some adjustments had been made.

Asked what she thought about President Barack Obama now that his approval ratings had fallen, she said the American political system or trend was such that the incumbent president usually would face a challenge at mid-term when political support would drop.

She said Obama had inherited a set of difficult problems from the previous administration and he had been persistent and visionary in tackling those problems, adding that she was privileged to be a “partner and adviser” to the president, whom she described a “very steady captain of the ship”.

Clinton said history would judge Obama’s leadership, especially in terms of his foreign policy and health reform initiatives, and that he was doing an excellent job in dealing with a variety of complex challenges, which did not have easy answers.

But what he had done in his first two years in office would be very important and lasting, including efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, she said.

On China’s economic rise, she praised China’s leaders in providing a better life for its 1.3 billion people and it was an important economic growth story which had been achieved through that country’s central planning system.

However, she hoped the Chinese people would be given more political space in the future.

She took the opportunity to commend Malaysia for both its growing economic dynamism as well as having a robust political system.

To a question from an Afghan lecturer now working in Malaysia that the US had abandoned Afghanistan in 1989, Clinton admitted that there was lapse in support after the Soviet Union left that country.

This subsequently brought on 30 years of warfare for its people with the warlords, mujaheedeen and the Taliban.

She said the US was now helping to rebuild the country, especially in the field of education where at one time there were 700,000 schoolchildren, all of them males, but now the student population had risen to about seven million with about 40 per cent of them girls.

Education, she said, was the key towards individual and social advancement and hoped that the Afghan lecturer concerned would one day return to his country to teach.

Clinton also paid tribute to Malaysia’s medical aid and capacity building programmes for the Afghans.

Clinton also said that she would be working with the US ambassador to Malaysia, Paul Jones, to initiate more people-to-people programmes in education. — Bernama